Wind-Up Toy
by indelibles
Summary: So back to the two men walking in from a battered car, you and your knight in tarnished armor. -For Sciamachys.


**Disclaimer: I don't own SPN.**

**Author's Note: For my best friend, Scia. **

The room is empty. You have nothing left, nothing but Dean's fake smiles and the way he sounds when he tells you it'll be okay. He's lying and you know it, but hell, lies are better than the truth. They always have been, really.

There was a time before when he wouldn't have bothered with lying, when he would have looked into your eyes and told you that nothing mattered anymore. There was a time when he would have stopped the Impala and told you that you were broken. But things have changed.

He cares too much now. He cares about you and because of that he won't tell you, instead choosing to let you go on like the wind-up toy he found on the street and gave to Sammy when he was young. He is the child who winds you up, who sets you down and walks beside you, pretending that you are the playmate they never had. You're just a piece of plastic, broken so many times that you're practically made of the tape holding you together. (He put that on too after he painstakingly pieced you together).

Sam knows. He sees it in the emptiness of your eyes and the way that sometimes you forget to eat, or sit outside all night because sleep and hell walk hand in hand. He understands perfectly, because in the months before Gabriel disappeared, he forgot who he was too. The only difference is that Sam was gone, hiding out across the country, and there was no one to save the archangel. He slipped off into the darkness on a night when the moon was covered by clouds, and he didn't come back. So Sam knows, but he cant help you. Not when he still spends ever day performing summoning rituals and praying to Gabriel.

And Dean sees it too, but he ignores it, choosing instead to focus on the fact that you're alive and unharmed. He can't handle the alternative, and you won't make him try to.

So Dean didn't stop the Impala and just drove, the only sound that of gravel under tires, until you reached the end and parked in front of the little cabin. As you got out you averted your eyes from the scratched, dirty car and tried not to think about how one night when you'd just received word of Charlie's capture, Dean had taken his tapes and crushed them under the heel of his boot.

It hurt Sam the most, you think, because Dean had always had his music and now he doesn't even care about that. Maybe Sam had some hope for the world when he caught you and Dean curled up together sleeping on the couch, or when Dean called him Sammy, but then the demons came and that ended. They came and chased Sam far away from the others, spilled Gabriel's once sacred blood on the ground. They chased Dean back into his shell of anger and broke Castiel. Sam hates them more for that than for anything else.

So back to the two men walking in from a battered car, you and your knight in tarnished armor. You stumble, your feet catching over a rock and you can see a hint of worry flash across his face. He might not be able to face the deterioration of your mental health, but he knows that you're growing weaker. Without your grace you're just another human with no purpose but to keep the people you care about safe.

Then room you step into is empty, or at least, it might as well be. There is a mattress with a thin blanket tossed over it, and Dean's bag. You know that he keeps some clothing for you in it too besides his little belongings. But besides that and you two men, the room is empty and you feel empty too. But he reaches over and grips your cold hand, and you don't feel nearly as alone, because as long as he's beside you, you can start to heal.

He's still Dean and you're still Cas and, well, he doesn't say it, but Dean still thinks of you as an angel.

You don't have your grace anymore. The night you fell from heaven your wings disappeared and there was nothing to hold you up. You crashed to Earth and as you fell you finally knew what it truly was to be human.

But Dean, he doesn't care that you've been getting paler lately and you keep coughing. He doesn't care that sometimes you forget where you are for a minute, forget what you. He still prays to you, and he still sees heaven in your eyes.

And maybe if you can make yourself blink away the tears, you'll see redemption in the green of his.


End file.
